Materials with a textile carrier coated and/or impregnated with a curable synthetic substance are used as a replacement for plaster cast bandages, which offer poor wearing comfort on account of their great weight. These replacement materials can be produced in the form of rigid synthetic bandages by choosing appropriate synthetic materials and carriers with considerably less weight and the same amount of firmness or rigidity, while at the same time a sufficient degree of breathability is guaranteed. Such materials, moreover, can also be used to produce a bandage that remains slightly malleable even when cured if curable synthetic materials with the appropriate properties are used.
Conventional synthetic rigid bandages are available in form of a linear, bandage-like material and are wrapped around the body part requiring support to form the support bandage, with hardening of the synthetic material being effected using appropriate procedures before, during, and/or after application of the bandage. Depending on the synthetic material, hardening can be effected through ultraviolet treatment, heat curing, or hardening with the aid of a solvent. Hardening with the aid of cold water as the solvent has proved to be especially useful because it avoids dermal reactions as for instance irritation of the skin caused by warming of the synthetic material.
To fit the conventional material to the part of the body in question, textile carriers can be used that are extensible either lengthwise or widthwise, with the shaping of the carrier effected during application of the bandage being fixed as the synthetic material is hardened. To retain the desired flexibility, in the case of conventional synthetic rigid bandages, knitted glass fiber carriers are used that derive their flexibility in the transverse direction, i.e. in the fill direction of the carrier, from the mesh structure of the knitted material, and the malleability of which in the longitudinal direction of the linear, bandage-type material, i.e. in the warp direction of the woven carrier, is attributable to the rigidity of the glass fiber, so that the individual meshes of the woven carrier remain malleable in the warp direction as well.
Materials produced using textile carriers of the kind specified above are described, for instance, in U.S. Pat. No. 3,787,272.
Use of these materials is problematic, however, in that when such support bandages are cut, glass fiber dust may be generated that is suspected of being injurious to health.
In view of these problems, manufacture of textile carriers from other synthetic fibers, e.g. polyester yarn and polyamide yarn, has already been proposed. These yarns exhibit a rigidity that is considerably less than that of glass fibers, however, so that when such yarns are used, materials produced for the manufacture of support bandages usually exhibit a sufficient extensibility in the transverse direction, i.e. in the fill direction of the woven textile carrier, while they retain only a very minor malleability in the longitudinal or warp direction. For that reason, materials produced using such carriers adapt themselves poorly to body shape. As a solution to this problem, a woven carrier is being proposed, in European Patent No. EP 0 356 446 B1, for a material for the manufacture of a support bandage in which the longitudinal warp threads are made of a heat-shrinkable material. The carrier described in this publication is initially woven with yarn that is generally available as multiple filament yarn, then subjected to a heat treatment. The heat treatment results in a shrinking in the warp threads that run in the longitudinal direction of the carrier, which gives these warp threads, and the carrier as a whole, a change of structure which in turn makes possible an extension of the warp threads and, consequently, of the entire carrier in the longitudinal direction.
Although a satisfactory adaptation of the bandage material to the shape of the body can be achieved using such carriers, production of these carriers is problematic.
In view of these problems in the state of the art, it has been proposed, in German Patent Application No. DE 200 11 824, to introduce a support bandage carrier of the kind described above. By using a leno fabric, which is simple to produce in comparison with knitted structures, the problems of production cited above to can be solved, while at the same time achieving satisfactory form stability of the carrier material. In the process, production of the known materials with a carrier in the form of a leno fabric is simplified as a result of the fact that one of the intersecting warp threads runs under the weft thread and the other of the intersecting warp threads runs over the weft threads, whereby the warp thread that runs beneath the weft threads is located at the points of intersection above the warp thread that runs over the weft thread.
Although such materials are easily produced and guarantee stability of form, and although the extensibility that is desired for conformability to body shape can thereby be ensured, it has been shown that the long-term stability of these materials leaves something to be desired.